I've Upped My Standards.

(Read 7 orsell your soul)

Subject:	My way, your way, anything goes...
Time:	5:18 pm.

When Appetite For Destruction was released I was in junior high. Already a long-time fan of Hard Rock, Punk and Metal, the album hit hard when it dropped. With near-constant video play on MTV and the legendary "cross" shirts popping up everywhere (you can bet I had one), the entire culture was saturated with Guns N Roses seemingly overnight. The album was a rock masterpiece that's just as good, if not better, today as it was when I first listened to it. I actually own the remastered gold disc version. "Welcome To The Jungle" is probably the absolute peak of Rock music history. "Sweet Child O' Mine" seemed like the kind of song that would be played every ten minutes on radio for the rest of our lives. "Rocket Queen" was the ultimate track to which getting laid seemed compulsory.

Emaciated, drug addled, dirty, volatile and with a stylishly cool look that had the five members appearing to have just crawled out of the gutter, picked up instruments and tapped into the darkest recesses of American youth culture in the Eighties, GNR was unstoppable. They were as musically adventurous as the Stones, only louder. They had as much attitude as the Pistols but they were louder. They had incredibly hooks and melodies like the Beatles but they were so incredibly fucking LOUD. Live shows were off the hook. I saw them open for Alice Cooper and they managed to out-thrill the audience when placed up against Cooper's well-rehearsed theatrics.

But really, it was all about that one album. The acoustic EP that followed was pretty good, the double album after that was bloated and the magic was already (mostly) gone. The covers album was horrible. This was a consummate example of a brilliant Rock act that burned as bright as possible then faded into nothing.

Now, after more than a decade and an estimated cost of over thirteen million dollars in production costs, Axl Rose has finished the "new Guns N Roses" record and turned it in to his label for printing and distribution. People are pretty excited. I mean, this album has been a legendary effort loaded to the brim with hype and dashed hopes. But let's be clear, it's not Guns N Roses. It's the terminally sociopathic Axl Rose and a revolving door of contributors working on something entirely incohesive and lacking inspiration. The album will not be very good. I've heard three leaked tracks and they were far from the classic sound we loved decades ago. They weren't bad songs, but I've heard more driving material from a number of younger acts over the years. Essentially, there's no point to this album other than providing the period at the end of every speculative sentence written in the past ten years or so.

I still love Appetite For Destruction and consider it one of the top five Rock albums ever recorded. I was lucky enough to experience the time period in which it was released and it will always hold a special place in my heart. I'll give the new album a listen, but if I were forced to wait another ten years it wouldn't bother me. They can try to hype this up but there's nothing there for me. I'm too busy dancing with Mr. Brownstone to care.